The Story of my Life

or

How I Learned to Ride a Motorcycle

by

Vic Norton

Hi! I'm Vic Norton. I started riding a long time ago, in the late 50s, after I had graduated from college. I bought a Zundapp 250 2-stroke from a friend of mine. After a while I traded the Zundapp in for a Triumph Cub (200cc 4-stroke), and I started hanging out at the Triumph shop in Riverside, CT. It was run by a guy named John Weigold. Weigold was an electrician during the day; the shop was open after 4:30pm. Weigold raced (scrambled - motocrossed) a 650 Triumph Bonneville on weekends, all around New England. Lots of motorcycle racers, beer drinkers, and other disreputable types hung out at Weigold's shop.

Pretty soon I decided I had to get out on the track. I told my mother that I wanted to race my motorcycle more than anything I ever wanted to do, but I wouldn't do it if she didn't want me to. I always knew how to manipulate my mother; she said, "OK," with tears of terror in her eyes.

So I started scrambling. I was pretty terrible--I could barely ride on the road. I can remember going out for practice at one of my first races at Middletown, NY. Everyone was practicing at the same time--big bikes, little bikes, everyone. I had read a few books. I knew that big bikes were faster on the straights, but little, light-weight bikes were faster through the turns. My book knowledge was totally demolished when a guy named "Moose" Hewitt, the New England open class champion that year, came by me like I was standing still on a Matchless 600cc single, on the tightest turn imaginable, throwing up a rooster-tail of dirt like Miss Budweiser on a turn in the Detroit River.

I decided my original Triumph Cub was too slow. I bought a used, hotter, racing version of the Cub from a kid named Jimmy, who hung out at the shop and who was getting out of racing. My new bike didn't improve my luck much--I still couldn't ride. Unfortunately, it also broke down constantly.

If I wasn't much of a rider, I wasn't much of a mechanic by a factor of 10! I sold the Triumph Cub and bought a 125cc Moto Rumi 2-stroke, 2-cylinder road racer that a guy from Norwalk, CT, owned, hoping this bike wouldn't break down as often as the Cub did. Besides, I hadn't been doing too well on the dirt--maybe road racing was my forte.

I was wrong. I crashed just about everywhere. I crashed at an airport track at Daytona. (That was the first year the speedway was used by motorcycles, but the little, amateur bikes raced elsewhere. BTW, I watched the last beach race the year before. It was won by Brad Andres.) I crashed at Vineland, New Jersey. I don't even remember the names of some of the tracks I crashed on. I crashed during races; I even crashed on a warm up lap.

My front forks were like skinny pretzels anyway, and they kept getting all twisted up. We used all kinds of tricks to straighten them out for the next race. Needless to say Moto Rumi parts were not easy to obtain in United States. No two Moto Rumi parts were the same anyway; replacement parts were next to useless. Fortunately, luck was with me. I never got hurt.

I decided that I wasn't doing enough racing. I could only get in about five or six road races a year. It just wasn't enough. I would go back to scrambling. (I still couldn't ride, of course.)

I sold my Moto Rumi and bought a 250cc Parilla scrambler. (A Parilla was a 4-cycle Italian bike, quite similar to a Ducati.) I could scramble on just about any Sunday somewhere in New England or New York. I also bought a 200cc Parilla sport bike, with clip-on bars, to ride around town.

I practiced week nights on my 200cc bike, on every twisty road in the Greenwich-Stamford area of Connecticut. On the weekends I raced my 250 scrambler. I stopped falling down so often. I began to get smooth. I started placing in and even winning some races at the "novice" and the "amateur" level. (We had a three tier classification of riders--novice, amateur, and expert. Riders were classified this way in amateur racing, e.g. scrambling, or professional racing, e.g. class C racing [1/2 mile dirt track, etc.]. When you got enough points at one level, you moved up to the next.)

That winter I bought a Parilla 250 road racer. They "built" it at Cosmopolitan Motors in Philadelphia, the Parilla distributor. The rocker arms were nothing but holes. There were holes everywhere else, too. When I got it back to Connecticut from Philadelphia, I brought it into Weigold's shop. "Boy, is this thing light," I told John. He reached over, grabbed it with two hands, and picked it up about two feet off the ground. "You're right," he said, "It is light." Weigold was a strong guy, but the bike only weighed about 210 pounds.

That was the beginning of 1962, my big year. I was scrambling every weekend I wasn't road racing. I was an expert scrambler in New York state, though still an amateur in New England. I won quite a few scrambles that year.

After races at Vineland, NJ, and Bridgehampton, NY, my road racing came together. I finally learned how to brake. I had thought you were supposed to brake hard as hell in a straight line, then let the brakes go, and lay the bike over into the turn. Now I realized everything should be smooth and continuous. Keep braking into the turn; just lighten up as you lay it over, until you are hard into the turn and the brakes are off and you start feathering the power on.

My road racing bike was fast. Now I could handle it. I won the first of two 250cc amateur events at Laconia, NH. There were 50 or so bikes entered; the second place guy had brought his Ducati up from Florida. I wasn't allowed to ride in the second Laconia race--I missed the qualifying session due to a broken clutch cable. I broke down at Watkins Glen, NY. I won at Marlboro, MD. I think that was the last race of the year.

In the summer of 1962 I retired from my job with a consulting engineer to take up mathematics. I enrolled full time in the School of General Studies at Columbia University and took nothing but mathematics courses.

By 1963 I was classified as an expert everywhere, in scrambling and in road racing, but I was thinking mathematics. I won a scramble now and then in '63, but I'd lost my sharpness. I was so out of shape in one race I won at Maybrook, NY, that I fell off my bike after the race was over, on my way back to the pits. I raced at Laconia on principle, but I didn't do very well. That was the only road race I entered in 1963.

I started graduate school at the University of Michigan in the fall of 1963. I got a Ph.D. in mathematics from Michigan in 1970 and began teaching at Bowling Green State University. I had sold my three Parillas by then, but I owned a Suzuki 250 "X-6 Hustler," which I had bought in 1966 before I got married, to make sure my wife knew the score. She sold that bike along with my racing leathers in a garage sale in 1972. I gave away all my trophies to kids on the block--much to the chagrin of their mothers. My motorcycling career was over for the next twenty years.

One day, in 1988, I was talking to my father on the telephone. I told him I planned to retire in about 6 years. He didn't say much then, but the next time I talked to him he asked me, "Did you say you were going to retire next year?" I straightened out his confusion, "No dad, I said I was going to retire in 6 years." "What are you going to do with yourself?" he asked. "I don't know, Dad, but I'd rather start doing it when I'm 60 than when I'm 70," I said. He thought about that for a moment. Then, in his most authoritative voice, he said, "Well, don't get a motorcycle!"

My father died in 1989. I think he was out fishing that day. His heart just stopped working in the middle of the night. It was a nice way to go. He was 85.

My father left me some money. Now I could afford some things I might have been hesitant about buying before. So, in the spring of '91, I started shopping around for a new motorcycle. I ended up with a Yamaha Radian. "After all," I reasoned to myself, "If Dad couldn't tell me what to do in my twenties, he certainly shouldn't be able to tell me what to do in my fifties."

The Radian was the biggest bike I had ever owned. The extra weight didn't seem to make any difference, however. It didn't take long before I was throwing it around with abandon.

In 1993 I went to Europe to do a "Best of the Alps" tour with Edelweiss Bike Travel. I rode a BMW K75S. It was somewhat heavier than the Radian.

The BMW handled beautifully on those Alpine turns, but it exposed my basic weakness. I had learned how to ride fast, but I'd never learned how to ride slow. On lightweights slow riding doesn't make much difference. You can almost pick the bike up and put it where you want it. On a bigger bike the weight can fast become too much for you.

I dropped the BMW twice, both times trying to make a U-turn from a standstill. The first time was embarrassing, but it didn't present any particular problem. The next time it happened I had become separated from my group and gotten off on a wrong road. I started making a zero-speed U-turn. The road was sloping down in the direction of the turn. I was using my front brake to keep the bike under control (which I now know is a big NO-NO). The bike got over too far, and I couldn't hold it up. The bike fell down, I fell off, and I put out my hand to protect myself when I hit the pavement.

Don't ever put out your hand to protect yourself when you fall! Keep your arms in and roll. I know! I jammed my elbow very badly; I could barely move my hand afterwards. Fortunately, a large Italian family, stuffed into a tiny, red Fiat, was just driving up on a side road when I fell. The father hopped out and helped me up with my bike. After profuse thanks, I rode off to try and find the rest of the group.

When I found the group, I told Werner Wachter (who owns Edelweiss) that I couldn't keep going much longer. We two separated from the rest of the group and rode directly to our destination hotel by the shortest possible route. I could barely pull back my front brake. To put on a little throttle, I would reach over with my left hand, twist the throttle to where I wanted it, grasp it with my right hand, and put my left hand back on the left grip. It's not exactly the way I like to ride a motorcycle.

Fortunately we had a rest day the next day, and I didn't have to go anywhere. They looked me over at a local clinic and said I should go to Bolzano to get my arm x-rayed. I never went, but one day's rest helped a lot, and I was able to continue the trip. I still couldn't use my front brake very well. I switched from riding with a bunch of hot dogs to following a married couple for the rest of the trip.

The next summer, in 1994, my companion (now wife), Kathleen, and I went to England to do a "Best of Britain" tour with Edelweiss. I rode a Kawasaki Concours. That was now the biggest bike I had ever ridden. I was scared to death riding it out of London that first time--with two up on an unfamiliar, heavy bike, all the traffic on the wrong side of the road, and round-abouts coming up constantly.

I only dropped the Concours once that trip--same situation, making a U-turn from a standing stop on a two lane road. But the most difficult test of my slow-riding inability was "Hard Knot Pass" in the lake district of England. It's a single lane road with a 30% grade, water running across the road in lots of places, and plenty of sheep ready to laugh at you when you make a slip. Every turn is a U-turn, and they come every 30 yards or so. I was in first gear going as slow as I could go, with Kathleen on the back. I had to keep going. If I had come to a stop, I wouldn't have been able to hold the bike. I can tell you, it was scary! I kept telling myself "if you ever get out of this one, you'd better learn how to ride slow!"

As usual the weight didn't bother me at all when I was up to speed. One of our companions was a young German named Gerdt, who had brought his 1100cc Yamaha sport bike over from the continent. Usually Gerdt rode by himself, often putting in 400 or more miles in a day. One day we came upon Gerdt when he was stopped by the road. He took off and we followed him over a whole bunch of twisty roads. He was amazed that we could stay right on his tail, with two up on a pretty heavy bike. He wrote us later saying how much fun it had been to ride with us that day.

That ride on the Concours convinced me I had to get a sport touring bike. I live in Bowling Green, Ohio, one of the flattest areas in the eastern part of the USA. If I'm going to ride on the kind of roads I like, ones that twist and turn all over the place, I have to go a ways to find them; and I need a bike that handles well when I get there. That's a sport touring bike--by definition.

Last spring I bought a Honda ST1100A and joined the Honda Sport Touring Association. I love the ST, and I've had wonderful times at lots of HSTA events this year (1995). I've dropped the ST three times in zero-speed situations, but I'm getting better. I practice U-turns in parking lots now and then. I'd do it more often, but it's so boring! Philip Donovan even complimented me on my form on a parking lot U-turn at the HSTA TN-STAR. I was as proud as I could be!

Well, that's the story of my life.

LET'S GO RIDE!